Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data her Department collects on incidents of peer-to-peer bullying (a) in schools and (b) online.

It is unacceptable for any child to be victimised, harmed or bullied. All schools are required by law to have a behaviour policy which includes measures to prevent and tackle all forms of bullying. They should exercise their own judgment and develop a consistent approach to monitoring bullying incidents in their school. There is no requirement on schools to record and report incidents of bullying, so the Department does not hold national information on the number of incidents of bullying that take place in schools or online.

The Department provided £1.3 million of funding over twelve months from spring 2015 to three anti-bullying organisations which worked with schools and young people to prevent and tackle all forms of bullying, including cyberbullying; and £2 million to organisations to specifically prevent and tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic (HBT) bullying in schools. This was on top of the £4 million provided for similar projects over the period 2013-15. In March the Government Equalities Office announced that £1 million will be made available to tackle HBT bullying this year.